The familiar and notable vacation rental company, Airbnb launched a new ad. Recognisably known, “Strangers” is probably for people who haven’t registered themselves as hosts on the site, perhaps because of their reluctance to engage with strangers.
What “Strangers” says
Supposed to be terrorising in its image, 3 monsters come to inhibit a house at night. Since no one seems to be inside, they use the weekend time and the freedom, to explore the house and its surrounding nature and its luxuries.
The edit made in the last second turns them into humans as the mother closes the door.
What Airbnb says
Talking about Airbnb in the third person; they say that when the idea for Airbnb was born in 2007, people were sceptical. In the past 14 years, there have been more than 1 billion arrivals on Airbnb.
Surely, Airbnb’s success must have relied on 2 factors: cost and the intimacy of home. Houses listed on Airbnb are owned by regular people; which means that they have the familiarity that hotels lack. Also worth adding to the point is that most hotels are a good distance away from the site worth seeing; whereas houses owned by hosts on Airbnb can be close; being an individual’s property over business property.
Despite that, Airbnb has surely felt the need to make an advertisement to reclaim the benefits of their services and to appeal to hosts themselves, and for a good reason surely. In recent years, horrifying stories about Airbnb rentals have emerged. While the authenticity can’t be verified accurately; and definitely not by sitting behind a screen; situations like so in which folks renting the apartment have refused to leave, or worse, quietly stayed behind in the apartment have allegedly happened. Then there are other issues like renters not paying for the damaged goods or property; say for setting the house on fire to quote as an example.